


Keeping Time

by bbcsherlockian



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post Reichenbach, reuinion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 14:09:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbcsherlockian/pseuds/bbcsherlockian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sherlock returns, John is defensibly skeptical and time is immaterial until it matters the most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping Time

It’s seven minutes to two and the clock on the mantlepiece is ticking slowly.

It was Greg who had told him, in the end. He had laughed, turned on his heel and hailed a cab before he really knew what he was doing, contemplating how funny it is that the people you think you trust the most you don’t really know at all. It had recently rained, the water clinging in trails to the side of the window and John watched them crawl past his vision, the light dancing on their bodies in the dying winter sun.

He went back to the flat, despite everything. Sat in his chair with absolutely no intention of taking his coat off, watching the carpet slowly darkening under the dampness of his shoe. So when the malnourished and entirely impossible figure of the late Sherlock Holmes stood in the doorway, John wasn’t entirely surprised. Greg had said, after all. They looked at each other and neither knew what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t this.

Sherlock said something, his eyebrows drawn together and a look of humility written across his features. John didn’t catch exactly what was uttered, but everything was probably another lie, another manipulation. He paint the portrait of his own face so artfully; a face that John could now never grow to trust.

Whatever it was that fell from his lips, absolutely none of it was apology.

A short while later the carpet had grown sodden and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. Both were comforted by the sounds of a muffled, droning london below them, by the colours the fading light provided.

“Don’t you want to know?” Sherlock had pulled off a glove and his bare hand was tracing the line of his lip. His face was expectant, open, and John knew it was just another magic trick, smoke and mirrors, a flick of the wrist. It was all so ridiculously transparent that he wanted to scream.

John blinked.

“How I did it? how I faked it and now how- how I’m back. With you.” The hesitation sounded honest but nothing could be relied upon now. John exhaled the air from his lungs but it didn’t really sound like a laugh.

He wanted to injure him. His mouth drew up at the corners, but his fists remained clenched by his hips. He wanted him to yell with the shock of it. He wanted him to hurt. He wanted him to bleed. The sun glinted off the mirror and for a mere second John saw his body fractured across the pavement, hints of blood-red in dark hair.

Sherlock’s mouth twisted in the prolonged silence and John wondered how long it had taken to learn the synchronization of those particular muscles to elicit immense sympathy by purely using his face. Perhaps he had used a mirror. Perhaps it was sheer improvisation. Perhaps it was genuine. He’d probably never learn how to read Sherlock Holmes.

“How you _did it?_ ” John’s right index finger twitched and he felt a bubble of unadulterated pleasure push against his ribcage. He wanted this, needed it. The words tumbled out of his mouth like pure silk.

“Piss off.”

In retrospect he should have spat out the syllables, he should have stung the air with stray globs of angry spittle. But as it was, he said it calmly. No inflection. They had the desired effect, nevertheless.

Sherlock’s smile was all teeth.

It’s twelve minutes past two, and the clock on the mantlepiece is ticking slowly on.


End file.
